A fundamental insight of the last two decades is that motivation is strongly influenced by beliefs about ability and achievement. If you believe that achievement is a product mostly of ability, then you are likely to believe that people with a lot of natural ability achieve a lot without having to work very hard.

In Experiment 1, they examined how much effort graduate students in STEM fields perceived that they exerted, relative to their peers. The results showed that for women, perceived effort was inversely associated with sense of belonging. That is many women seemed to say to themselves "this is so hard for me, I must not really belong in graduate school." That perception was, in turn, associated with decreased motivation. These associations were not observed in men.

In Experiment 2, the researchers created a fictitious field (Eco-psychology) and distributed a professional-looking brochure for a graduate program in Eco-psychology to Introductory psychology students. The graduate program was subtly portrayed as either male-dominated or gender-neutral. Students were asked a number of questions about it, including how interested they were in the program and how difficult they thought they would find it, compared to "the average student." When the program was portrayed as male-dominated, women thought that they would find the program harder, and were less interested in learning more about it.

Experiment 3 used an elaborate ruse in which subjects believed they were interacting via webcam with a professor from the Eco-psychology program at University of Colorado, Boulder. The key manipulation was that the "professor" provided feedback about the subject's likely success in the program (which in this experiment was always portrayed as male-dominated). The feeling of alienation observed in Experiment 2 was observed again, but feedback from the professor could undo it; if the professor merely made effort seem normal but commenting that everyone in the program had to work hard, the gender effect disappeared.

This study mirrors some conceptually similar studies of college freshmen from historically underrepresented groups. For example, in Walton & Cohen (2011) students heard a simple message from upperclassmen emphasizing that everyone feels disoriented and concerned about whether they can really do the work when they first get to college, but that things get better. These brief messages not only made students feel better, they had an impact on students' grades. (There was no effect of the intervention on White students.)

In the larger picture, these findings should remind us of the powerful impact of beliefs on motivation.

The studies and your comments are reasonable except for your very overblown intro "examines whether such beliefs might account for sex differences in participation in STEM fields.". There is nothing in these research designs which even arguably suggests that these beliefs _account for_ sex differences in STEM participation.

Steve Ceci (who has written several comprehensive and balanced reviews) makes a strong case (in line with common sense when you put ideology and idealism aside) that the main cause of low female participation in STEM fields is the lower female _interest_ in "things not people" seen in numerous surveys of all kinds. It is not that the typical female feels "i can't do this", nor that she can't do this, it is that she thinks "boring, yeck!".

There is really no excuse for the fact that most people who write on this topic do not even consider this common sense interpretation. It is the kind of ideologically blinkered social science that gives the public low respect for academics.

Dan Willingham

1/16/2013 02:49:33 am

@Skip I agree that "account for" is the wrong verb. I should have said "contribute to." I'm sure the authors would agree that they are not on to "the" reason for disproportionate representation in STEM.
But I disagree with your implication that it's a simple as interest. Experiments like these indicate there are other factors at work.

Skip Tikul

1/16/2013 09:32:06 am

Hmmm, do these studies show that lower female participation in STEM fields is due to factors other than interest? I don't see how Study 1 or Study 3 possibly do that. Study 2 might be argued to do that, but it seems like kind of a stretch. Women told that "Ecopsychology" was male-dominated showed less interest in going into it. So the idea would be that women considering a real field that they know is male-dominated would be put off by that? Doesn't the whole thing seem so contrived as to be very questionable? It is not as if you are taking women who have an ACTUAL interest in some ACTUAL field and showing that a randomized manipulation of learning that the field is male dominated has that effect.

With this sort of contrived stuff I wonder about demand effects. If the materials are not very subtle, subjects may figure out what's going on and play along. At a minimum there would need to be a debriefing in which subjects were asked what they think the purpose of the study was, and the authors should report what the subjects said.

If women do not think they are very interested in non-people-oriented fields that they see as very dry and boring, then why are you sure you know better than they do what they ought to be doing? Is it not possible that persuading them to go into these fields may cause human misery, or at least, get people off track for no good purpose?

In the study that looked at URM students, did they control for socioeconomic/regional backgrounds? I know that as a (white) high school student, I constantly had teachers telling me how my work wasn't college level, how I'd REALLY have to work hard in college, how I'd be shocked at the difference (etc.etc. etc. Only to find that, actually, they'd prepared me very well... much better than other students in my entering class, in fact...)

Do teachers in high-URM population schools neglect to drum these points home? Would it make a difference if students received a harsher view of college and less self-esteem boosting?